Eddy Cue: Apple 'Trying to Do Some Things' to Combat the Spread of Fake News

Apple is actively working on ways to ensure its content delivery services are robust enough to stand up to the challenge of “fake news”, according to Apple’s senior vice president of software and services, Eddy Cue.

Cue made the comments during a wide-ranging interview at the Code Media conference on Monday evening. Echoing comments recently made by CEO Tim Cook, Cue said that technology companies have a special responsibility to members of the public, most of whom now depend upon personal devices to receive their news. With that in mind, Cue said that while there was no simple way to counter the spread of fake news, the company is working on methods to reduce its dissemination.

“We want Apple News to be available to everyone, but we want to vet and make sure that the news providers are legitimate. We’re very concerned about all of the news items and the clickbait from that standpoint, and that’s driving a lot of the news coverage. We’re trying to do some things in Apple News, we’re learning from that and we need to share that together as an industry and improve it.”

Fake news has been a trending topic since last year’s U.S. Presidential election, with companies like Facebook making loud statements about the action they have taken to bring the quality of articles to users’ attention.

Last week, Tim Cookadmitted that fake news is “one of today’s chief problems” and that “we have to give the consumer tools” to deal with the challenge. Companies like Apple should “filter part of it” before it reaches the public, he said, but in a way that avoids “losing the great openness of the internet”.

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